By Melissa Dunson
mdunson@joplinglobe.com
The Unsinkable Molly Brown earned her name once again.
The 5-year-old chocolate Labrador who serves as a Newton County search-and-rescue dog came out of surgery Thursday morning with a pacemaker in her formerly failing heart.
Her owners, trainers and handlers, Allen and Alicia Brown, of Saginaw, will pick her up today at the University of Missouri College of Veterinary Medicine in Columbia.
Molly has been part of some of the highest profile search-and-rescue operations in the Four-Sate Area in recent years. She needed the pacemaker because she recently was diagnosed with a complete electrical heart block.
The costs for diagnosing and treating the condition are swelling to more than $2,500. There was no budget for the all-volunteer unit, and Allen Brown, a paramedic, and Alicia Brown, a nurse, pay for all their dogs’ vet bills themselves.
But the community’s response to Molly’s story has been overwhelming, Allen Brown said. On Wednesday, a medical technology company, Medtronic, donated the pacemaker for Molly. On Thursday, a Southeast Kansas businessman anonymously offered to pay the cost of the surgery up to $2,000. He told the Globe that he was moved by the story of a dog who had done so much for humans.
Patrice Graham, another volunteer member of the Newton County K-9 Search and Rescue Team, said she’s had calls from people looking to donate money to the fund she opened at Southwest Missouri Bank for Molly. She said she had not checked how much was in the account Thursday afternoon. But her response to all the support: “I just got chills.”
“It surprises me greatly,” Allen Brown said Thursday of the support for Molly. “There’s just been such an outpouring of public support for her.”
Allen Brown said that if Graham hadn’t contacted the media and opened the bank-account fund for Molly, he and his wife would have paid for the surgery somehow.
Hungry diners at Chatters restaurant in Webb City heard about Molly’s plight Thursday when owners Jamie and Staci Delozier started selling raffle tickets to pay for Molly’s treatment costs.
“Being locally owned, we try to help in the community as much as we can, and I feel like this was an easy way to do that,” Staci Delozier said. “That, and we’re huge animal lovers.”
Allen Brown said the money in the bank account will be used to pay for costs associated with Molly’s pre- and post-surgery veterinary visits, and anything left over will go into another fund to pay for veterinary treatment of the other dogs on the search-and-rescue team.
He said Molly will be confined to her crate for two weeks after she returns home today so her heart can heal, then she will have limited activity for the next two months. After that, he said, Molly should be able to return to “full active-doggy status” with the search-and-rescue team.
Even more than the money, Allen Brown said, Thursday’s greatest gift was peace of mind. Once Molly was out of surgery, he said, everything seemed more promising. Alicia Brown, he said, finally slept. And the Browns’ other four dogs, including fellow search-and-rescue K-9 Hope, seemed to realize that Molly was going to be OK.
“Before, when Molly would lay in bed with us, Alicia would just listen to her breath; today, (Alicia) is a world better,” he said. “And Hope has just been moping around the house, but when the hospital called and said (Molly) was out of surgery, she was sitting right there with her tongue hanging out and her tail wagging. Alicia swears that she understands and was like, ‘When is she comin’ home?’”
Donations for Molly
A fund-raising account under the name Search Dog Molly Fund is open at Southwest Missouri Bank at 32nd Street and Indiana Avenue.
Chatters at 1010 S. Madison St. in Webb City is selling $5 raffle tickets for a chance to win free lunch once a week for a year. The raffle tickets are available through May 29, and the drawing is May 30. All the proceeds will go toward Molly’s treatment costs.
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